Terzo

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. An Italian term referring to a third part or division of a whole
2. It denotes a musical interval equivalent to a third, commonly used in harmony
3. In historical contexts, it can describe one of three parts of a poetical stanza or a narrative division

Etymology: Italian "terzo" comes from Latin "tertius," meaning "third." The Latin word is built from "ter," meaning "thrice," which is closely related to "tres," meaning "three." The same root gives English "tertiary," "tierce," and the Latin ancestor of "third." Italian kept the sense of the ordinal number and gave it a poetic twist: "terza rima," the interlocking three-line stanza pattern that Dante used in the "Divine Comedy," takes its name from this word. Each stanza's middle line rhymes with the first and third lines of the next stanza, so the rhymes form a chain that carries forward. Italian also uses "terzo" for the third part of a whole, as in "un terzo," one third. The noun sense in your entry follows this pattern, dividing a whole into three equal shares. The word therefore carries both a counting sense and a fractional sense, which English has split into separate words such as "third" and "tierce."

Synonyms: third, tertiary

Antonyms: first, primary, initial